1118 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO.
7, JULY 2020
A Curved 3-D Printed Microstrip Patch Antenna
Layout for Bandwidth Enhancement
and Size Reduction
Giacomo Muntoni, Giorgio Montisci , Senior Member, IEEE, Giovanni Andrea Casula , Member, IEEE,
Francesco Paolo Chietera , Student Member, IEEE, Andrea Michel , Member, IEEE,
Riccardo Colella, Member, IEEE, Luca Catarinucci , Member, IEEE,
and Giuseppe Mazzarella , Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Microstrip patch antennas are widely employed in acknowledged ones are the increase of substrate thickness [1]
several applications, thanks to their low profile, low cost, and easy and the elements stacking [3]. A thick dielectric substrate can
manufacturing. However, the demand for new technologies provid- increase the typical narrow bandwidth of a patch antenna [4].
ing compactness and high performance poses a long-lasting chal-
lenge for the antenna designer. Traditional methods for bandwidth However, a capacitive probe compensation [5], [6] is usually
improvement and size reduction have some drawbacks, tied mostly required to reach a bandwidth larger than 10% when using a
to poor radiation performance or troublesome implementation. coaxial probe feeding. Moreover, the bandwidth improvement
In this letter, a novel, simple, but effective patch antenna layout achievable with thick substrates comes at the cost of surface
exploiting the customizable form factor guaranteed by 3-D printing wave generation and spurious feed radiation. On the other hand,
(or other fabrication techniques) is presented. An appropriate
modification in the vertical profile of the radiator is introduced. the stacked patch configuration enhances the bandwidth relying
Specifically, without loss of generality, a cylindrical shape has on the parasitic elements’ additional resonances, by partially
been selected as a proof of concept. The proposed solution allows overlapping them with the resonance of the fed element. Unfor-
to increase the impedance bandwidth from 2.9% of a standard tunately, this solution leads to a complex fabrication process and
flat microstrip patch to 9%. Additionally, the projected antenna
can be affected by problems related to the layers’ alignment or
resonant size can be reduced up to 38% compared to its flat
counterpart. to the presence of air gaps [7]. Other bandwidth enhancement
methods benefit from the multimodal operation of single patch
Index Terms—Bandwidth enhancement, curved patch, antennas yet causing multiple lobes to appear in the radiation
microstrip antennas, size reduction, 3-D printing.
pattern [8], or from the impedance-matching technique [9].
Another desirable feature of microstrip antennas is compact-
I. INTRODUCTION ness [10]. Typically, the patch antenna size is set by its resonant
dimension (i.e., half a guided wavelength). However, for some
ICROSTRIP patch antennas are widespread in countless
M applications, including aerospace and satellite commu-
nications, but also radio and wireless scenarios, thanks to their
practical applications the antenna can be too large, especially
at low frequencies, occupying a significant percentage of the
space inside a wireless device. Compactness can be achieved
reduced size, weight, and cost [1]. However, major downsides of employing several techniques, such as using shorting walls
these antennas include low efficiency and narrow bandwidth [2]. [11] and pins [12], folded patches [13], or substrates with
Among the simplest methods to overcome these flaws, the most high dielectric permittivity [14]. Unfortunately, shorting pins
and walls involve a complicate realization and can generate
Manuscript received March 30, 2020; accepted April 24, 2020. Date of nonsymmetrical broadside radiation [15], folded patches can be
publication April 27, 2020; date of current version July 7, 2020. This work was
supported by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research in the framework
difficult to implement as well, and, finally, high-dielectric con-
of the CrossLab Project. (Corresponding author: Giorgio Montisci.) stant materials are expensive, offer poor radiation performances,
Giacomo Muntoni, Giorgio Montisci, Giovanni Andrea Casula, and and lead to a bandwidth reduction.
Giuseppe Mazzarella are with the Department of Electrical and Elec-
tronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, Cagliari 09123, Italy (e-mail:
Thanks to the advent of different fabrication techniques,
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; which allow the realization of radio frequency (RF) substrates
[email protected]). with customizable form factor, such as among the others the ad-
Francesco Paolo Chietera and Luca Catarinucci are with the Department
of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento, Lecce 73100, Italy (e-mail:
ditive manufacturing 3-D printing, antennas that smartly exploit
[email protected]; [email protected]). the third dimension to decrease the planar size can be envisioned
Andrea Michel is with the Department of Information Engineering, University [16], [17]. Relying on this concept, at the end of [17] preliminary
of Pisa, Pisa 56122, Italy (e-mail: [email protected]).
Riccardo Colella is with the National Research Council, Lecce 73100, Italy
results on a meandered patch antenna show a reduction of the
(e-mail: [email protected]). planar size, though also with the help of a substrate with a larger
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2020.2990944 dielectric permittivity.
1536-1225 © 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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MUNTONI et al.: CURVED 3-D PRINTED MICROSTRIP PATCH ANTENNA LAYOUT 1119
Fig. 1. 3-D view of the proposed curved antenna.
As pointed out before, increasing the substrate thickness of Fig. 2. Dimensional sketch of the curved patch antenna: (a) top view, (b) front
a standard microstrip antenna is a simple way to increase its view, and (c) side view.
bandwidth, but leads to surface wave generation and spurious
radiation. In this letter, to overcome these drawbacks, we propose
instead only a local modification of the vertical profile of a patch TABLE I
DESIGN PARAMETERS OF THE CURVED ANTENNA
antenna using a circular pattern. The metal patch is printed on
a cylindrical surface over a planar substrate, as shown in Fig. 1.
The substrate thickness is maximum at the center and gradually
decreases toward the edges of the patch.
In this case, we achieve a bandwidth enhancement exploiting
the increase of the average substrate thickness in the region of
the metal patch, whereas the remaining part of the dielectric
substrate maintains a thin profile (see Fig. 1). This means that
opportunely nonflat configurations, such as the one proposed
here, can be employed to reduce the effect of the surface wave,
thus providing a valid solution to be used as the basic element
of planar arrays, where the effect of the surface wave is a critical
point since it generates strong coupling both in the feeding net- Hs = 2 mm.
work and between the array elements. Moreover, the proposed
class of antennas can be easily integrated in circuits including
other microwave components that require a thin substrate to x- and y-directions (see Fig. 2) of the cylinder are equal to W
reduce both the surface wave and the spurious radiation from and L, respectively.
microstrip discontinuities. The antenna is designed to operate in the industrial, scientific,
Finally, the configuration shown in Fig. 1 significantly reduces and medical (ISM) frequency band with a center frequency of
the size of the patch in the xy plane since the resonance exploits 2.45 GHz, and it is fed by a coaxial connector, located at a
also the z-direction. distance yf from the edge of the patch [see Fig. 2(c)]. The metal
Without loss of generality, the proposed antenna has been patch and ground plane have been obtained using conductive
optimized to work at 2.45 GHz, but it can be easily scaled copper tape with thickness t = 35 μm.
at a different operating frequency. A thorough analysis of the To investigate the effect of the bending on the patch perfor-
influence of the bending radius of the curved surface on the mance, a set of simulations has been carried out using CST
antenna characteristics is herein presented. Microwave Studio, varying the bending radius and comparing
A prototype of the curved microstrip patch antenna has been the results with the frequency response, radiation, and size of
finally manufactured and measured, showing a bandwidth of a reference standard (flat) patch antenna. The latter shares the
9%, compared to a 2.9% bandwidth of the standard flat patch. same substrate of the curved antenna (stripped of the cylindrical
Moreover, the planar resonant size of the proposed antenna is part).
reduced by about 38% with respect to its flat counterpart. In the following simulations, the substrate extension S is set
to 71.5 mm, the thickness HS is equal to 2 mm, and the width
W of the patch is equal to 47 mm. The first step of the antenna
II. ANTENNA DESIGN AND SIMULATIONS design is the selection of the bending radius RH , then L and,
Fig. 2 shows a dimensional sketch of the proposed antenna consequently, the corresponding value of HB are chosen to get
from the top, front, and side perspectives. The curved patch is the resonance at 2.45 GHz. Specifically, the height HB of the
placed over a flat square S × S × HS substrate, made of polylactic portion of cylinder on which the patch lies [see Fig. 2(c)] is
acid (PLA) with dielectric permittivity 2.54 and tan δ = 0.015. equal to HB = RH [1 − cos(arcsin 2RLH )]. Finally, yf is selected
The substrate beneath the metal patch is a cylindrical protrusion to match the antenna to the 50 Ω coaxial connector.
made also of PLA, with maximum height HB , measured from Some optimized combinations of the design parameters are
the top of the flat substrate. The radius of the above cylinder RH reported in Table I for several values of the bending radius. The
will be denoted as a bending radius. The extensions along the reference flat antenna corresponds to RH = .
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1120 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO. 7, JULY 2020
TABLE II
GEOMETRICAL PARAMETERS AND ELECTROMAGNETIC PERFORMANCE OF THE
CURVED ANTENNA COMPARED TO REFERENCE STANDARD PATCH
Fig. 3. Frequency response of the curved patch antenna for selected values of
RH , HS = 2 mm.
Fig. 4. Simulated normalized directivity of the curved patch antenna (RH = Fig. 6. Comparison between the percentage bandwidth B of the curved patch
12 mm) and reference flat antenna (RH = ). (a) E-plane. (b) H-plane. for HS = 2 mm (see Tables I and II) and of a standard flat patch.
radiating edges decreases, hence a reduction of the directivity,
from 7.4 dBi of the reference patch to 6.9 dBi (see Fig. 5), is
observed. However, the different shape of the patch leads to an
increase of the radiation efficiency from 67% of the reference
patch to 86%. This contrasts the reduction of the directivity,
resulting in an increase of the gain from 5.72 dBi of the reference
patch up to 6.28 dBi.
In Table II, the geometrical parameters and the electromag-
netic performance of the proposed antenna are summarized
for several selected bending radii. A planar resonant length
reduction ΔLRES of 38% can be obtained with a bending radius
Fig. 5. Gain, directivity, and radiation efficiency of the proposed antenna as a of 12 mm. This is achieved at the cost of an increase of the
function of the bending radius.
maximum substrate thickness, which is about 10 mm in the ISM
band, and thus the low-profile characteristics of the proposed
antenna should be evaluated time by time, based on both the
In Fig. 3, the frequency response is reported for different operating frequency and the selected application.
values of the bending radius RH . The bandwidth B ranges from The results reported in Table II are consistent with the theory
3.3% of the flat antenna to 9.3% of the antenna with the smallest of resonant patch antennas, wherein the radiation quality factor
bending radius considered in our analysis. Qrad is inversely proportional to the substrate thickness [2]. For
In Fig. 4, the simulated directivity of both the reference flat the curved patch, we can define the average substrate thickness
patch and a curved antenna with RH = 12 mm are depicted. An HA = HS + WVCL , wherein VC is the volume of the portion of
increase of the 3 dB beamwidth in the E-plane, from 82° to 90°, cylinder on which the metal patch lies. In our case, as shown in
is noticed for the curved antenna. Table II, the increase of HA leads to an increase of the impedance
Finally, in Fig. 5, the antenna gain (G), directivity (D), and bandwidth, which can be ascribed to the reduction of the Qrad ,
radiation efficiency (η) are shown as a function of the bending just as happens for a standard flat patch. In order to show this, in
radius RH . By reducing RH , the distance L between the two Fig. 6 the bandwidth of the curved antenna as a function of the
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MUNTONI et al.: CURVED 3-D PRINTED MICROSTRIP PATCH ANTENNA LAYOUT 1121
Fig. 7. Photograph of the antennas’ prototypes and experimental setup for
far-field pattern and gain measurement.
average substrate thickness HA is compared with the same curve Fig. 8. Comparison between measured and simulated frequency response of
the reference flat antenna and curved antenna in Fig. 7.
obtained for a standard flat patch with the same width W and with
substrate thickness HF = HA . The two curves in Fig. 6 fit well
up to HA = 6.5 mm, whereas for larger values the bandwidth of
the standard flat patch starts reducing. This behavior is due to the
inductive effect of the feeding coaxial probe, and it depends on its
length LP inside the dielectric substrate (see Fig. 1). In fact, the
longer the coaxial probe, the higher the inductive contribution to
the input impedance, which makes difficult to match the antenna
[5] thus reducing its bandwidth. This effect is delayed in the case
of the curved patch, because for low values of RH the curved
profile allows to match the antenna using a shorter coaxial probe
(see Table II: for RH < 24, LP is less than HA ).
III. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION
A prototype of the curved antenna with RH = 12 mm has been
manufactured to assess the simulations reported in Section II. In
this case L = 22.55 mm and yf = 3.27 mm (see Table I). Due
to its peculiar curved profile, the substrate has been fabricated
using a commercial 3-D printer (Raise3D Pro2 Plus), using
a PLA thermoplastic filament. After the printing procedure, a
Fig. 9. Comparison between simulated and measured normalized far-field
conductive tape has been glued to the cylindrical surface and to pattern (the simulated E-plane cross-polar components are not shown since lower
the bottom of the PLA substrate. A photograph of the realized than –50 dB).
prototype is shown in Fig. 7.
To perform far-field and gain measurements, two identical
prototypes of the flat patch antenna have been manufactured IV. CONCLUSION
as well (see Fig. 7), using the same fabrication process and A curved microstrip patch antenna for bandwidth enhance-
materials of the curved antennas. The measurement setup is ment and size reduction is presented. The antenna profile, which
reported in Fig. 7. The frequency response of the prototypes, follows a cylindrical shape, improves the bandwidth of a stan-
their far-field pattern, and gain have been measured using the dard flat microstrip patch from 2.9% up to 9% and provides a
Anritsu MS46322B two-port vector network analyzer. reduction of the projected planar resonant size of about 38%. The
In Fig. 8, the comparison between the measured and simulated presented results also highlight an improvement of the curved
reflection coefficients of both the flat antenna and the curved an- antenna measured gain compared to its flat counterpart, despite
tenna is reported. The agreement is good for both prototypes with an expected slight reduction of the antenna directivity. A 3-D
a measured bandwidth of 2.9% (71 MHz) and 9% (220 MHz), printing cost-effective technology has been employed to enable
respectively. The measured gain is 5.8 dBi for the flat antenna the construction of the unconventional dielectric substrate. Con-
and 6.3 dBi for the curved antenna. Finally, the comparison cluding, the features of the proposed antenna can be proficiently
between the simulated and measured far-field pattern is depicted used in wireless applications, biomedical scenarios, array and
in Fig. 9, showing a very good agreement as well. An increase phased array layouts as well as in any situation in which a slight
of the cross-polarization level in the H-plane is observed for the increment of the size in the z-direction can be easily traded with
curved antenna. all the benefits herein described.
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1122 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO. 7, JULY 2020
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